Harmony Korine burst onto the cinematic landscape as the co-writer to the controversial, unflinching Kids. He made his debut as director with Gummo, a redneck David Lynch-esque look in a small Southern town. He followed that up with Julien Donkey Boy, Korine’s entry into the Dogme 95 movement. Both films cemented Korine’s status as a polarizing filmmaker. Some critics lauded him as a unique voice others considered his films incomprehensible and reprehensible. Korine’s career was derailed by drug problems and after a nine-year gap, he returns with Mister Lonely, co-written with his brother Avi.
Mister Lonely opens with a scene of a Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) riding around a go-kart track on a yellow mini-bike as Bobby Vinton’s hit song plays over the credits. This is exactly the kind of thing Korine is the master of, finding beauty in the strange and unsettling. This faux-King of Pop earns a living in Paris and meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton) while performing at an old folks’ home. Marilyn invites Michael to the Scottish countryside where she and other celebrity look-alikes have formed their own commune. They have a James Dean, a Madonna, a Buckwheat, the Three Stooges, the Pope, Queen Elizabeth II, Sammy Davis Jr., and a foul-mouthed Abraham Lincoln. Marilyn has a daughter, a doppelganger of Shirley Temple, and is married to an insensitive, piggish “Charlie Chaplin.” Oddly, their ranks also include a Little Red Riding Hood (played by Korine’s wife, Rachel). There’s also a completely unrelated subplot involving filmmaker Werner Herzog (in a scene stealing role) as a priest in South America charged with airdropping food to poor villages. One of his nuns falls out of the plane, but miraculously survives, an act of God, no doubt.
This quiet commune acts as a microcosm for our own society. The impersonators look to fashion their own idyllic fantasy world, but find the realities of life creeping in. Their sheep get sick and need to be put down. Despite creating alternate personas, those in the community still suffer from all the same neuroses and jealousies as anyone else. For all of Korine’s intentions and best laid plans, Mister Lonely feels like two incomplete films slapped together. There’s thoughtfulness and tragedy to be found as well as tedium and pretension.
Rating: **
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